


Secrets in the Dark

by rhymer23



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Reunions, Gen, POV Sam, R plus L equals J, Reunions, Revelations, Secrets, post season 7 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-04 02:10:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12159465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymer23/pseuds/rhymer23
Summary: As Jon draws near to Winterfell, Sam worries about how he will react to the revelations about his parentage. But after Jon and his party arrive, this is not the only secret that will be revealed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This follows TV canon, taking the end of season 7 as the jumping-off point, so obviously it has spoilers up to then. Don't expect an action-packed tale of battles and desperate cliffhangers. This is not the tale of the wars to come. Instead, this is a character-driven story about some of the reunions, revelations and long-overdue conversations that must surely happen after Jon reaches Winterfell. Sam is the viewpoint character throughout. Sam and Jon are the main characters, with the other listed characters appearing in only a few scenes each.
> 
> I've tagged it as Sam/Gilly and Jon/Daenerys, since those relationships do exist in the story, and people with strong attachments to other ships might want to be warned. However, these are not the focus. I think of it as a gen story, really.
> 
> This story is complete and runs to about 22,000 words in 7 parts. I am still tweaking and editing the later parts, so will post the parts serially over the next few days, ideally posting two or more parts a day until it's done.

**Secrets in the Dark**

She found him at last as he sat alone in the dark. He raised his head as he heard her soft step in the hall. "Sam?" she called quietly. "Are you in there?"

He swallowed; cleared his throat. "Gilly. Yes. Yes, I'm here."

He had expected her to come straight in, but when the door stayed where it was, shut almost to a crack, he knew that she was waiting for an invitation. "Come in," he said. "It's all right. There's nobody here."

Nobody and nothing. The dresser was bare. The mantelpiece was devoid of ornaments. The bed had been empty for months, and the hearth held only cold ashes. 

Gilly entered cautiously. "It's dark in here, and cold. It doesn't seem right. Someone should light a fire before--"

"Yes," Sam said. "Someone will. But it will still be cold, won't it?"

She frowned in puzzlement, and he sighed. In the flickering light from the hallway, he saw his breath steaming in the cold air of the room. Jon's room. The room of the King in the North. The bed-chamber of the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Yet it was empty of ornament, devoid of memories. A petty yeoman in the south would have ten times the richness in his house. Jon's small room at Castle Black had felt more like a home than this. 

He sighed, scraping his hand across his face. "I'm sorry. I just came here to… check. I didn't mean to stay so long. I just… sat down for a moment and ended up staying for a while, just thinking. Waiting."

 _Worrying_ , he thought. _Worrying about secrets, hiding in the dark._

Gilly looked down at the pile of furs on the floor. Sam had shaken them clean the morning before days before, then rearranged them in a soft nest. They remained where he had placed them, untouched. 

"He hasn't come back, then," she said.

"No." Sam shook his head. "Nobody's seen him. He likes to go out hunting at night, you see. They leave Jon's door open a crack, so he can push it open himself, and they open the gates and the outer doors for him when he wants to go through. But nobody's seen him since yesterday morning. And Jon will get here tomorrow, and I've…"

"It's not you, Sam," said Gilly. "It's not your fault."

"But Ghost _knows_ me," Sam protested. "He won't let anyone else in Winterfell touch him, did you know that? But he lets me. He lay down and slept beside me the other day, right there on the rug. And I've lost him. Jon will be home tomorrow, and how will I tell him? How will…?" He stopped, pressing his lips together.

_How will I tell him?_

"You won't need to," Gilly said quietly. She was looking not at Sam, but at the twilight through the open shutters. "Ghost's gone to find him. He knows he's landed at White Harbour. Ghost knows he's coming and he can't bear to wait any more."

Sam shook his head. "But how…?"

 _How does he know?_ But he remembered Bran and his direwolf at the Wall, and all the impossible things that had happened in the north. He remembered Jon and Ghost at Castle Black, a lifetime ago and longer, before summer's end. He forgot, sometimes, that Gilly came from north of the Wall, and that there were some things that she understood far better than him, for all his book learning.

"Yes," he agreed. "Yes. He's gone to greet Jon in private, and then… and then he's going to bring him home." 

It should have filled him with relief, but did not. His voice cracked on the last word.

******

A child of the south, Sam had not thought to find music in the north. Northerners were dour and grim; hewn from stone, and joyless. They lived their lives in fear of winter, and music was a frivolity in the face of _that._

Yet even at Castle Black, there had been songs. Here at Winterfell, the servants sang just like servants in the south: songs of love and ribaldry and loss. Guardsmen bellowed choruses, pounding out the rhythm with their fists. And sometimes, from behind closed doors, he caught snatches of music of an exquisite, alien beauty. 

He could hear it now as he turned to close the door. "Oh," he breathed. "Is it…?"

He stopped. _The music of the Old Gods. The voice of the Children of the Forest. The songs of the First Men._ It sounded foolish, but yet…

The music stopped. He heard faint laughter, a human voice; some spoken words, and then it started again.

"Travelling musicians here for the winter," said Bran Stark from behind him. "They are practising songs to sing for their king and his queen."

"Oh." Sam swallowed. "Yes. Yes, of course." 

He closed the door, and leaned back against it, his hands pressed against the cold wood. Bran's clothes were beaded with melted snow, and firelight flickered on his wet hair. He had been outside, Sam realised; outside in the gathering twilight and the finely falling snow. He almost said something about it, but stopped himself. He almost followed up on the talk about music, but stopped himself there, too. 

"I was wondering…" he said. "That is to say, when are you…?" He swallowed. "Please don't tell Jon about… well, about _this._ Not straight away, anyway. He needs to know, of course; I know that. He didn't talk about it much, but it hurt him badly, not knowing who his mother was. But..."

"He needs to know who he is." Bran's eyes seemed to be gazing at something beyond Sam, but how could that be, when Sam was pressed against the door? He fought the urge to look over his shoulder. Sparks of firelight glinted off Bran's unblinking eyes. "He needs to know _what_ he is."

"Yes," Sam agreed, "yes," but he could imagine how Bran might tell Jon, just blurting it out instead of a 'hello,' in front of everyone, before Jon had even passed through the gates. Oh, he hadn't thought about it at first, swept away by the thrill of the revelation, but there was something unnatural about Bran, as if… _As if he isn't properly human any more_ , Sam thought, but perhaps he wasn't. He claimed to be this three-eyed raven thing, after all.

"Yes," he said again. He pushed himself away from the door and walked forward. Even beside the fire, the air felt cold, as if Bran carried with him the chill of winter. "But it needs to be told in the right way, and not right away. Give him time to…"

Bran blinked at last, closing his eyes for a long moment, then opening them again. A branch cracked in the fire, the noise sharp in the sudden silence. 

"…to be home," Sam said, remembering Jon's stories of his childhood in Winterfell. He had not always been happy, but his respect for father, his love for his siblings – Robb, Arya, Bran – flowed beneath his words like a deep river. Sam had envied him at times for having that.

But then he thought of the barren chamber of the King of the North, devoid of keepsakes and memories. Arya was presumed dead when Jon had last slept in Winterfell. Bran had been lost beyond the Wall. And Jon's father was not his father, and his siblings were not his siblings after all. But…

"To be home," Sam said defiantly. 

The music started up again, very faint. Bran turned his face towards the fire. "Then tell him, then," he said, his voice distant. "I will speak to him of something else, something I saw beneath the weirwood tree. I flew on the wings of a raven, and I saw…"

Something scraped against the shutters: a dead twig, perhaps, carried by the wind. "What?" Sam asked. 

"But it will not be enough that I saw it," Bran said. "When I saw the dead marching on Eastwatch, Jon believed me, because he had seen them, too, at Hardhome. But Jon, like all of them, has utmost faith in the magics woven into the Wall. The gates in the Wall can fall, the men of the Wall can fail, but the Wall will always stand. It will always stand." He closed his eyes. Were those tears that shone on his cheeks, or just melted snow?

"What have you seen?" Sam asked, his heart lurching in his chest. "Has the Wall…?"

Bran looked at him; no, looked _through_ him. "Look to the raven," he said.

******

All day long, stable boys and guardsmen claimed to have seen dragons in the eastern sky. 

Sam doubted it. The clouds were thick and a storm was coming. Even the nearby hills were fading into the mist, as if Winterfell stood alone at the heart of a shrinking world. But Jon and the Dragon Queen were undoubtedly near. They had spent the night in a holding less than a day's ride away, and its lord had sent a raven as they left.

Then came a rider with the news that they were less than a league away and moving fast, hoping to beat the storm. The news was spread through Winterfell by horns and drums and a dozen scurrying pages. Fires were lit and banners were hoisted. By the time Jon's party was nearing the winter town, two hundred people had taken their places, gathering in a courtyard trampled clean of snow.

"I've never seen a dragon," Gilly whispered, bending forward to shield the baby's head from the cold wind. 

"Nobody has," Sam said. "That's the whole point. Nobody's seen one for a hundred and fifty years."

Gilly looked fearfully at the sky. Sam's curiosity hungered for dragons, but more than that, he longed to hear the howl of a direwolf coming home. But Ghost never made a sound. If Ghost knew any secrets, he would never need to tell them.

The crowd shifted. Sam found that he had taken a step forward, pressing into a gap, and then the crowd reformed around him. Voices rose and fell, and suddenly he heard Arya Stark speaking words he knew he was not meant to hear. 

"Remember the last time we all stood here to greet a king and queen."

"When we were happy," said Bran, his voice without inflexion, as if happiness and sadness alike were meaningless to him.

The siblings were silent for a while. "Because we _were_ happy," said Sansa Stark. "Weren't we." It did not sound like a question. "Oh, we were full of our childish discontents. Arya wanted to fight like a boy. I longed for pretty dresses and to live in a song. But we were happy then. Before the world changed."

"Before _we_ changed," said Bran, looking up a broken tower.

"I sometimes wonder," Sansa said, "what would have happened if father had barred the gates that day. If King Robert and his queen and Joffrey, and all the others… If he'd just turned his back on them. If he hadn't let them in."

"It could not have been stopped," said Bran. "It should not have been stopped. It brought us where we had to be. Where the world needed us to be."

"And where is that?" Sansa said sharply. "What--?"

"I won't do this," Arya said suddenly, fiercely: the first break Sam had seen in the cloak of control that she always seemed to wear. "I won't meet him like this, so formal, with everyone watching."

"Arya!" Sansa reached for her sister's arm, but Arya was quicker, snatching herself away.

"I won't," she said. "I will not."

She left, cutting through the crowd in a way that Sam could not understand. She did not jostle, did not command, yet somehow she was through them. Sam soon lost sight of her. He swallowed, and tried to slink backwards, but he was too big and too clumsy and the crowd did not yield. 

"She's still a child," said Sansa, "in many ways. Running away…" She stopped, and gave a self-deprecating smile. "Yes, I know," she said, although Bran had said nothing. "I know."

And then there was nothing left but waiting. Sam edged backwards; managed a step, and then another step. He saw Sansa speak again, but the winds were rising, and this time he was spared from hearing her private words. 

When Jon and the queen came, they came with the storm. The gates were thrown open. The wolf banners lashed in the rising wind, then one of them ripped free, to fly beyond the walls. "No dragons, Sam," Gilly breathed. "But, look, there's Ghost."

And there was Jon, walking alone, with Ghost at his side. His hand was on Ghost's towering shoulders, his gloved fingers buried in the direwolf's fur. _He's showing them that he's still a man of the north_ , Sam thought. _He's showing them that he's still a Stark._ Sam's feet took him backwards again, and further back.

There was no retinue of servants, and few guards. Behind Jon, but mounted, came Ser Davos Seaworth. A tall woman rode beside him, armoured like a knight. Could this be the Dragon Queen? No, surely not...

Jon did not wait to be welcomed. "Why should he?" Sam murmured to himself, his lips moving silently. This was Jon's home, and he had been acclaimed its king. 

"Queen Daenerys Targaryen stands outside our walls," Jon said, but the wind was rising and the snow was swirling, swathes of whiteness obscuring the towers. "She comes not as a conqueror. She comes not even as our queen, demanding entrance by right." The wind wailed, but Jon's voice rose, carrying above it in the way it must have carried in all his battles, all his victories, all his struggles that Sam had missed. 

_I barely recognise him,_ Sam thought.

"She comes as an ally," Jon said, quieter now, but still utterly audible. "Because that is what we need: trust and fellowship, as we face the war to come. No," he said, "as we face the war that has already come. A war that must erase past hatreds. A war that will make names and titles meaningless. She comes--"

 _I can't_ , Sam thought. Jon said more, but Sam shook his head from side to side, and did not hear it. Back, he had been walking; back and back, while everyone else was pushing forward. Gilly was following him, looking at him questioningly. Sam just looked down, suddenly desperate for Jon not to see him. 

_Not like this_ , he thought, just as Arya Stark had said. He was suddenly fiercely envious of Ghost, who had had his reunion on the relative privacy of the road. Jon had been the best friend Sam had ever had, and the best he could ever hope for. But now secrets lay between them, and failures, and lies. There were too many people watching, and Jon… Jon was a _king._

"I knew it, of course," Sam told Gilly, aware that he was babbling, that he made no sense. "But I didn't really _know_ it, if you see what I mean?"

 _Childish_ , Sansa Stark had called her sister. But like Arya Stark, Sam turned and fled. 

But, then, his father always said that he was craven.

******

"I haven't seen her yet," said Gilly. "The Dragon Queen."

Sam turned another page without really seeing it. There were so few books left in the Winterfell library. Once there had been a whole library tower, or so he had heard, but Theon Greyjoy had burned it down. Now there was just this one room, with just a few salvaged smoke-stained volumes. "Maybe tomorrow," he said. 

He knew there had been shouting down in the great hall. He had heard as much when he had scurried out of the library to attend to his necessary business, although he had tried not to listen. Sam had spoken up before the maesters in the Citadel and before his brothers in Castle Black, but this was not his place. Most of the northern lords had returned to their own hearths, but enough remained, and more were coming in, drawn by the news of their king's alliance with Daenerys Targaryen. They would not be happy that Jon had brought her here. Once again, Jon would have to stand up and fight for the things he believed were right.

 _And I want to be there with him_ , Sam thought, turning another page and another, seeing images of swords and crowns and trees with eyes. But how could he? How could he stand up and defend Jon's decision to bend the knee to Daenerys when he knew what he knew?

"They say she is very beautiful," Gilly said.

"Mmm," Sam agreed, barely hearing her. 

_Because I am no good at lying_ , he thought. _I show the truth in my face._

Gilly turned away, moving towards the door. "I'm going to check on Little Sam." She sounded a little put out. 

Sam closed the book, pressing his hands down upon its smoke-stained boards. Perhaps Gilly had wanted him to say that she was beautiful, too; that no queen could be as beautiful in his eyes. Oh, everything was so complicated! He knew so little about girls; about _people_ , really.

He opened his mouth to say something, but Gilly was gone. Sighing, he stood up and walked to the window, opening first one shutter and then the other. It was no longer snowing, he saw, although the wind was still strong. It was bitterly cold, but the clouds were beginning to part. 

_Look to the raven_ , Bran had said.

Was that a raven there: that quick flash of movement? Standing on tiptoe, Sam leaned out.

"…happy to see me," he heard, carrying quite clearly in the wind. 

"Oh, I was," said Jon. "I am. You can't believe how--"

"Sansa said you would be so happy your heart would probably stop," said the voice that must surely belong to Arya Stark. 

Jon chuckled. "She was right. When I heard that you were alive, it was… Arya, I thought you were dead. All these years, I thought you were dead."

They were on the wall walk above him, Sam realised, and here he was with his head stuck stupidly out of a window, barely ten feet below them. He didn't dare move back in again. He didn't dare close the shutters, in case they heard. He was suddenly terrified that he might cough. He didn't want to breathe.

"I used to think about you almost every day," Arya said. "They tried to make me give up Needle, but I couldn't do it, because you gave it to me. When I held it, I remembered your smile. And now you're smiling again, but not like you did then."

"No," Jon agreed. "None of us are the way we were then."

"And you don't like it." Oh, but Sam wished so badly that they would move on. He wanted the wind to change direction, to snatch these words away from him. He had done his share of eavesdropping in the past, but not like this, not on a friend. "When you heard that I was alive, you imagined me as I used to be. But I am no longer that girl. You don't like--"

"I'm happy to see you, Arya, truly. We have all changed: you, me, Sansa, Bran. We're strangers, in a way, but nothing can break those memories. Arya…" 

There were no words for a while, but from the faint, small sounds, Sam thought that they were hugging. That was good. It was good to hug. Moving in slow, careful increments, Sam began to bring his head in from the window. He reached for a shutter, beginning to close it.

"Without those memories of Winterfell," Jon said quietly, barely audible above the wind. "I haven't told anyone this. I didn't tell Sansa. But… But without having Winterfell and those memories to fight for, I don't think I'd have found the strength to keep going, after…"

"After?" said Arya, when the silence had grown very long.

"After I died," Jon said. "After they killed me. After I came back."

Sam pulled the shutter closed, not caring if they heard him. After that, he sat there in the ravaged library for a very long time, as the candle slowly burnt down to a stump.

******

end of part one


	2. Chapter 2

**Secrets in the Dark: part 2**

All was silent in Winterfell at last, although Sam had no doubt that half a hundred whispered conversations were taking place behind closed doors. He heard some of them as he passed slowly down the hallway, holding a lamp with a tiny dying flame. Just the hum of voices, though. He shied away from hearing actual words. 

As he passed Jon's door, he paused for a while; breathed in and out again, and then prepared to carry on.

The door opened before he could take another step.

"Sam." Jon's smile, at least, was familiar, although even at Castle Black, it had been seldom seen. "Ghost heard you out there. I came to see why he was reacting to a friend, and here you are."

"Here I am," Sam agreed. He smiled; tried to hold it, but felt it falter.

"But why weren't you there earlier?" Jon asked. "I didn't even know you were at Winterfell until someone told me, barely an hour ago. I would have come looking for you…"

"Or sent for me," Sam said. "That would be better. Because you're a king now. You can't just come looking. You've got to…" He was babbling again. He made himself stop, and moistened his suddenly dry lips.

"But it was late," Jon said, "and I thought you might be asleep." Stepping back, he held the door open in an unmistakable invitation. Sam had no choice but to obey. No, he _wanted_ to obey, because Jon was his friend – his only friend, really – and it was good to see him again, even if…

"But I am glad to see you, Sam." Jon pulled him into an embrace, clapping him on the back and holding him tight. "I really am."

"Yes," said Sam. "Yes." They parted after a moment. Jon sat down in the chair that Sam had used while waiting for Ghost to return. Sam took the low chair by the hearth. Ghost settled down between them on the pile of furs, his body pressed against Jon's legs. "I…" Sam began. "Jon. I mean, your grace…"

"Just Jon," said Jon, who wasn't called Jon at all, but Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of his name. "We were brothers together at Castle Black. We are brothers still."

"But I failed you." Sam hadn't meant to say it, but as soon as the words came rushing out, he realised that this was _it_ ; that this lay at the heart of the dreadful clenching nervousness that he had felt ever since he had known that Jon was returning. "You sent me to Oldtown to become your maester, but I left. I left without forging a single chain. I mean, I healed the Lord Commander's son of greyscale – the old Lord Commander, that is – but that's not enough to earn the chain of healing, and I emptied some chamber pots, lots of chamber pots, but there isn't a chain for that, and I studied some books, but mostly ones I wasn't supposed to look at, and then I stole quite a few of them, which probably doesn't really count as proper learning, and I then ran away. I ran away."

"You failed me? Oh, Sam…" Jon was shaking his head minutely from side to side, a rueful smile on his lips. "Kill the boy, Maester Aemon said. Kill the boy, and let the man be born. But I remained a boy. I sent you to Oldtown to become my maester at Castle Black, as if I had many long, easy years ahead of me as Lord Commander, slowly preparing for the great war to come. How long does it take to forge a maester's chain?"

"Years," Sam said. "Well, it depends, but… years," he said.

"Yet within days of sending you away, I lost Castle Black."

"But Castle Black's still standing," Sam protested. "You didn't…"

Jon reached for a glass of wine, half raising it to his lips, then returning it to his lap. He gripped it tightly, his knuckles white. "Yet I lost it all the same. They turned on me. I judged them to be traitors, and I hanged them, because I had to, but the failure was mine as much as the sin was theirs."

"They…" Sam began. _They killed me_ , Jon had said. 

"Until death," said Jon, swirling the red liquid around in the glass. "That's what we swore. My watch will not end until my death."

"They killed you." There. He had said it. Ghost was looking directly at him with his red strange eyes. "If I'd been there…" he said, as if _he_ could have done anything, and, "But how did you…?"

"I don't know." Jon's expression was bleak as he looked down at his untouched wine, dark as blood. "The Red Woman had a lot to do with it. I think Ghost did, too. I think I… went to him, for a while, after I died, but after that there was nothing. Just… nothing. Until…"

Sam pressed a hand to his face, feeling his breath hot and desperate against his palm. He let it fall again, clasping his two hands together in his lap. He tried to speak, but Jon was before him.

"It shall not end until my death," Jon quoted. "Perhaps it was cheating to take that as a way out. Perhaps I became an oathbreaker, after all, when I turned and walked away. So never say that you have failed me, Sam. Never say that."

"And you are no oathbreaker, Jon," Sam said. 

Jon laughed: a bitter sound that Sam had never heard from him before. "'I will wear no crowns.'"

"But…" Sam began, because surely an oath sworn under false pretences could not be binding. The oath had been sworn by Jon Snow, a bastard son. It should not bind Aegon Targaryen.

"Nobody asks." Jon gave a rueful smile. "They know I was in the Night's Watch, and yet here I stand, far from the Wall and claiming a title I swore never to hold. They should hang me on sight. They should at least _ask._ But they don't. Because I'm a king. And kings, it seems, can make wave their hand and make a lord out of a bastard and an oath null and void. So nobody says anything about it at all. Even you, Sam. You should have called me to account as an oathbreaker as soon as you saw me."

"But I thought…" Sam shook his head uselessly from side to side. "I assumed that Stannis had done something. I know he offered to. Or maybe your brother Robb had decreed something before he died. I knew there was a good explanation. I knew you wouldn't just walk away."

"Yet I did." Jon was staring into the darkness at the base of the flames. "I broke my oath and I walked away."

"No!" Sam protested. "You swore to be the sword in the darkness, to be the shield that guards the realms of men." Sam leant forward, momentarily forgetting all the secrets that still lay between them. "You still are, and far more than you could ever have been when stuck at Castle Black. You have led the fight against the dead. You _will_ lead it. Perhaps that's why you came back from the dead. Because you're…"

Jon leant back in his chair, closing his eyes. He looked deeply weary, Sam suddenly realised. It was late, and Jon's day had started with a cold journey, passed through angry politics, and finished with fraught reunions. And here was Sam, his friend, with a truth on the tip of his tongue: a truth that would change everything.

"Because…" He tried again, but he could not finish it. 

Jon opened his eyes. Leaning forward, he put the wine down without drinking it. "How's Gilly?" he asked. "How's little Sam?"

Sam leaped upon the gift he had been given, grabbing it with both hands. "Oh, she's well. He's well. He's talking, you know. It's amazing how they grow. Why, only this morning…" 

And he kept talking; kept talking long after it was really time to stop. 

******

_Look to the raven_ , Bran had said, and Sam had done so, but in the end, it was not Sam who saw the raven arrive. That fell to a maester's assistant, in the darkest watches of the night. By the time Sam awakened from his dream-tormented sleep, the news was already six hours old. 

"What…?" he said, as he emerged into the snow-covered courtyard, stupid and sleepy and late. "What…?"

Nobody answered him, of course. Shouting had awakened him, long minutes before, but whoever had been shouting was now gone. He heard the sound of horses being roused in the stables. The rookery door was open and a raven was departing, then another and another and anaother. 

And then Jon was there, dressed for war and winter. He clasped Sam on the forearm, his fingers digging in. "It has begun," he said. 

Afterwards, when Sam had asked a few more questions, he would realise that Jon had slept not a wink that night. The news of the raven's arrival had been brought to him less than half an hour after Sam had finally left him. 

"What?" Sam asked, still slow, as he often was in the morning.

"A raven has come from Castle Black," Jon said. "The first they knew of it was when all the Eastwatch ravens arrived at all once, all in a panic and none of them with messages. And then, half a day later, a message came from Greenguard."

"But that's an empty ruin," Sam said.

"I sent men to garrison it," said Jon, "although far too few. But they had a few ravens and enough skill to send one. They passed on a message from Tormund Giantsbane, who had fled to them through the snow, escaping from the ruins of Eastwatch by the Sea."

"The ruins?" Sam said, but he had known, really, hadn't he? He had known since Bran had hinted at it, then snatched the truth away. 

"Eastwatch has fallen," said Jon. "The Night's King has taken a dragon for his own, and it destroyed the Wall at Eastwatch, melting it like snow in spring time."

A dreadful shriek sounded in the sky. Sam looked up and saw a dragon, the first he had ever seen. He gave it barely a glance. There were more vast and terrible wonders here in the story Jon told. "The Wall has fallen?" he said.

"Only at Eastwatch," said Jon, "but it is enough. The army of the dead has passed into the Seven Kingdoms, and we…" He sighed, scraping his hand across his face. "It's here, Sam. I've spent the last hours issuing orders. I have sent warning to the Last Hearth and am sending reinforcements, but what can we do? The Dothraki are still over a week away. Queen Cersei has promised her armies, but then will they get here?"

"I…" said Sam. "I don't know."

"Dragonfire can kill the dead," Jon said, "but the Night's King can take down dragons, so that's not the answer I hoped it might be. And the Night's Watch…" he said. "The Night's Watch is nothing. The shield to guard the realms of men. That's what I thought. That's what I truly believed. I thought the Night's Watch would hold the line alone, but they're been left behind the battle lines."

_Which is why you were allowed to leave_ , Sam thought. _So you could be here, ahead of the dead, ready to lead the fight._ But there were some things that you couldn't say to a friend, not when they still believed that they were a bastard son of House Stark. 

"With a human foe," Jon said, "we could throw men against it, but with this…" He let out a slow, defeated breath. "Sam, with this… Sometimes it seems as if the only thing to do is to pull everyone away from them. Because everyone who dies facing them…"

"Becomes one of them," said Sam. It felt unreal, to be standing here in Winterfell, talking about such things. The world was turned upside-down. Normally he, Sam, was the one who babbled in his nervousness, while Jon was the man of few words. Now Jon was pouring out desperate, heartfelt torrents, and Sam had no idea what to say.

"Yes," said Jon. He looked up at the bleak sky above them, and the dragons that wheeled there against the grey. 

 

******

Even the library was no longer a retreat. As Sam closed the door behind him and let out a slow breath, he saw that somebody else was already there, sitting in his accustomed chair, leafing through one of the books that Sam had brought with him – stolen, really – from the Citadel. 

"What a tedious fool this writer is," the man said. He had a glass of wine in one hand. With the other, he gestured at the cramped text. "He writes of the Long Night – a tale of horror fit to chill anyone's blood – and makes it as dull as an empty bottle and as dry as a septa's-- Well. Never mind." 

Sam stayed where he was. This had to be Tyrion Lannister, he realised, Hand to Queen Daenerys. "My lord…" Sam stammered. 

"Ah, you know me," said Tyrion. "That's one of the perks of being a dwarf: that you never need to waste your time with tedious introductions."

"It can be a bit like that when you're fat," Sam found himself saying.

"Or when you go everywhere with a white wolf or three great dragons," said Tyrion, "or have a burnt face or missing fingers, or if you're a bald eunuch or a crippled boy or a mountain of a woman with a sword in your hand." He shrugged, raising his glass as if in a toast. "We are all of us rather noticeable, are we not? It's as if we had been crafted for the convenience of the poets who will tell our tale." He took a long drink, then put the glass down again. "If there are any poets left, or people to hear their songs."

"There will be," said Sam, because he had to believe that it was true.

Tyrion drained his glass, immediately refilling it from the large jug on the table. From the way he tipped the jug, it was clear that it was almost empty. Sam wondered how long he had been here, drinking alone. He wondered if the man was drunk.

"Not drunk," said Tyrion, although Sam had not spoken, "just not… entirely… sober." He gave a joyless smile. "I'm hiding, you see; trying to avoid a private conversation that I have come to realise might be more… challenging than I thought. After all, I entered my sister's lair alone. I think I've earned my chance to be craven now."

Sam fought the urge to snatch the book away from Tyrion, afraid that he was going to spill wine on its ancient pages. "Who are you avoiding?" Sam asked. 

"You're thinking there's quite a list of probable candidates," Tyrion said. "But I'm talking about my wife."

"Your wife?" Sam moved away from the door at last, perching awkwardly on a low stool. 

"Sansa Stark." Tyrion took a long swig from his glass, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Mind you, it was never consummated, so the marriage has no standing in law. She has been married again and widowed since then, but…" He tried for more wine, but the glass was empty. Grimacing, he placed it down on the table with careful deliberation. "We Lannisters gave Sansa no cause to love us. I thought she would hate me. I thought she would have told her brother that I was a monster to marry a frightened child, but apparently she told him that I had always been kind."

"Were you?" asked Sam, then wished that he hadn't. This man was a stranger, after all, and the son of a great lord. 

"Not enough to save her from what came after," Tyrion said. "Not enough to…" He sighed, shaking his head. "Robb Stark would have condemned me forever, merely for marrying her. Ned Stark would have condemned me forever for my name. Arya Stark still glowers at me, daring me to say a wrong word. But Sansa… She was a frightened child then, but now… Now she is a woman, and she is _magnificent._ It's almost enough to make me wish…"

_What?_ Sam almost asked, but did not. 

Tyrion was silent for a very long time. Several times he raised his glass, grimaced when he found it empty, then lowered it again. He turned another page, but did not appear to be reading anything. 

"I was there," Tyrion said at last, "when they died. I saw it happen. I tried to…" He stopped, shaking his head. "I tried," he said. "I'm sorry."

Sam frowned. "When who died?"

Tyrion grasped at his glass, clutching it so tightly that it seemed that he would surely crush it into shards. "You don't know. Nobody's told you. _You don't know._ "

"What?" asked Sam. "Know what?"

And Tyrion Lannister told him.

******

end of part two


	3. Chapter 3

**Secrets in the Dark: part 3**

As Sam searched for Jon throughout Winterfell, he imagined himself accosting him with a furious bellow, grabbing him and slamming him back against the wall. There was no answer when Sam hammered at Jon's door. Gilly hadn't seen him, either. "Sam," she pleaded, grabbing at his arm. "Sam, what's the matter? Please, Sam…" 

His vision blurred, and he shook his head, pulling himself free. "My father's dead," he said. "I'll tell you later."

But already his imagined fury was fading. By the time he found Jon in the storage rooms, he found himself unable to utter a word. All he could do was stand there in the near darkness, his hands opening and closing impotently at his side.

Jon turned round, saw him, and turned back again. He was inspecting crates of dragonglass, taking up shards in his hands and judging them somehow how just the feel of them, although they all looked the same to Sam. "This used to be the kennels," Jon said, "but after what Ramsay Bolton did here, we couldn't use it for dogs. It wouldn't be fair to them. It wouldn't be fair to Sansa. That was one of the first things I did when we started to rebuild after the battle. We still need dogs for hunting, of course, but we will not keep them here."

"My father liked hunting," Sam heard himself say. "So did my brother, but I didn't. That's why they…" He stopped, and blinked his stinging eyes.

"But sometimes I wonder if that's a luxury we can't afford," Jon said. "We're facing the great war. Can we afford to waste resources on building new kennels just to protect one person's feelings?"

"Of course we can," said Sam, his voice strange and not like his own voice at all. "If we trample all over other people's feelings, then why are we bothering to fight at all? Being nice to each other: it's part of being alive. The dead aren't kind."

"No," Jon agreed. He closed the crate, his hand lingering on its lid as if caressing something precious. "But Sansa's a woman grown, and strong. She says I don't listen to her enough. Perhaps…"

"No," said Sam, wiping roughly at his eyes, although Jon did not turn to see it. "She's wrong. She could face this – or I expect she could. I mean, I don't really know her. But just because she _could_ , that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep her from needing to. We will all have to sacrifice things in this war, but we mustn't sacrifice others needlessly, whether it's sacrificing their lives or just their feelings. If we can do anything, _anything_ , to light just one tiny candle in the dark, then we must do it."

Jon gave a mirthless laugh. "I've missed you, Sam. So wise."

"Is that why you did it, Jon?" Sam started quietly, but it seemed that the anger hadn't entirely vanished, after all. "Is that why you didn't tell me? To protect my feelings? Or was it because you wanted me on your side? Because you wanted me to bend the knee to Daenerys Targaryen and swear inviolable oaths before you… Before I…"

"Sam!" Jon tried to grab his arm, but Sam batted him away. Jon tried again, but this time Sam couldn't resist him. Jon was a warrior, and Sam, for all his bulk, was useless: a nobody who couldn't be trusted with the truth. "Sam," said Jon, holding Sam by his upper arms, "what are you talking about?"

"You know," said Sam, but he was quiet now, the brief, sudden fury replaced with the soft bitterness of betrayal.

"No." Jon's fingers dug deeper, then released their hold. Jon took a step back, his hands at his sides, open and honest. "I swear to you, Sam, I don't know."

And Jon Snow never lied. Everyone who knew him came to realise that. But everyone had believed the same about Lord Eddard Stark, who turned out to have lied to everyone he had ever met. Jon's whole life was based on a lie, so was it any wonder that he…?

"No," Sam murmured, unable to complete that train of thought. Jon was more than the lies that had made him. Sam knew him, and he did not lie. Why would he lie?

Sam let out a breath, suddenly feeling almost too weary to stand. "We need to talk," he said. 

******

Sam told the tale not as Tyrion had told it, but passionless, like a maester writing a report. Throughout it all, he avoided looking at Jon's face. He never once looked at the flames. Instead, he looked throughout at the grey stone wall beside the window.

It didn't even take long: just a few minutes of telling to recount something that had changed his life. It had taken far longer to walk here in silence from the kennels. It had even taken longer to dismiss the servant who had so desperately wanted to bring them bread and wine. 

"Sam," said Jon when Sam had finished, but, "Don't!" Sam pleaded, scouring his eyes with the edge of his hand. "I don't think I could face sympathy at the moment."

"And I'm not very good at giving it," Jon said. "Sam, I swear I didn't know."

Sam dared to look at him at last. "But why didn't somebody tell you? You weren't there, I know that, but you're meant to be her ally. I heard you say that. Her ally, not properly her vassal, even though you've bent the knee. But allies talk. Allies trust each other. Why didn't she tell you? Why didn't Tyrion Lannister tell you?"

Jon shook his head, scraping a hand through his hair. "They didn't know I knew you. Why should I have? I'd never left the north. Why would they think that the name of a southern lord would mean anything to me? Why--?"

There was a knock at the door. "Not now!" Jon called.

"But your grace…" 

"I said, not now!" 

After a moment of hesitation, footsteps receded from the door. "I'm sorry," Sam said. "I'm keeping you from… things. Important things. More important than--"

"If we trample over people's feelings, then what are we fighting for?" Jon quoted with a faint smile. "A wise man told me that." The smile faded before it could reach his eyes. "Sam, I'm not trying to defend them, just to explain. And I'm not…" He let out a breath. "I didn't ask. I knew she had gone with a dragon. I'd urged her not to use them against castles and cities, but she left, there was a battle, and she won it. I knew what that meant. I knew, but I didn't want to know it, so I didn't ask."

"People die in battles." Bracing himself, Sam looked at the hearth, at the fire that blazed there. "My father ruled his holding with a rod of iron. The men he commanded, they had no choice, but he… He chose which queen to serve after his own overlord died. He made his choice. Death is what happens in war."

Jon looked at his own right hand, still bruised and scarred from recent fighting, and chapped raw from exposure to the cold. He had recently returned from a trip beyond the Wall, Sam remembered, although Sam didn't know what had happened there or what horrors Jon had faced. "I have killed so many," Jon said. "Men who deserved it, yes. But also men who had no choice but to follow the commands of a monster like Ramsay Bolton. Men who would have been flayed alive if they had refused. Yet I killed them."

"Because that is war," said Sam. "But at least you stood before them face to face, and met them sword upon sword."

"While Daenerys rained down fire upon them from above," Jon said bitterly. "Who could fight that? They didn't stand a chance."

Sam listened to the crackle of the flames. Outside, he thought he heard a dragon screaming, but faint and far away. "But if she hadn't done it, the Lannisters would have won the battle. The Lannisters would have won, and there would be no Dothraki and Unsullied heading north to fight the army of the dead. The queens would still be tearing each other apart in the south, while the dead turned the north into a field of bones."

"Yes," said Jon. "I wish…" 

He stopped. Sam could have sobbed at the irony of it: that here he was defending the queen who had killed his father, while Jon was full of doubts. It was not how he had expected the conversation to go. It was not what he had expected to feel. 

"And she gave my father a choice," Sam said. "She offered him a way out. It wasn't loyalty to Cersei that made him refuse. It wasn't anything remotely admirable like that. It was sheer pride and stubbornness. He would never bend: _never._ I hated him for that."

"But you grieve for his loss," Jon said. "No son could do otherwise."

"I hated him," Sam burst out, "but I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to be proud of me, and now he never will, and that makes me feel…" He couldn't say it. He didn't even know how it _did_ make him feel, and Jon did not ask.

There was another knock at the door. Once again, Jon sent the person away. Ghost was not in the room. For the first time in years, Sam wished that there was wine to drink, and that, like Tyrion Lannister, he could lose himself in the hollow comfort of a bottle. 

"But Dickon," he said at last. "Dickon didn't deserve this. I tried to hate him, too, for being everything that I couldn't be, but…" He shook his head, sinking into memory. "It couldn't have been nice for him. It was dreadful to be despised by our father, but it was probably almost as bad to bear all his hopes and expectations. At least I escaped the prison, but Dickon never could. Our father was a hard taskmaster, and angry, and cold. Yet Dickon was loyal to him to the end."

Jon's hands were clenched on the arms of his chair. "And yet she killed--"

"She had to," Sam found himself saying. "In front of everyone else, she asked them to make a choice. Perhaps she shouldn't have asked it, but she did, and they answered. She couldn't let that pass unpunished, just as you had no choice but to hang the men who killed you…"

"…even though some of them acted through a genuine belief that they were doing their duty," Jon said quietly. "But there was no other way it could end."

"No." Standing up, Sam walked to the window. He could see the top of the godswood from here, just the topmost branches, older still than the ancient walls that surrounded them. He wondered if Bran Stark was there beside the heart tree. He wondered if Bran had seen Sam's father die, or if he could see it if Sam asked him to. "Countless men have been executed over the centuries for loyalty to the wrong lord. Why should this feel different just because it was burning? Quicker than hanging, anyway." His voice cracked on the last word.

"The Mad King had my grandfather burnt," Jon said.

"And Daenerys is his daughter." Sam sighed, turning away from the window. "But you say she has come here in good faith. She's turned away from her battle for the Iron Throne to fight the greater threat."

"I think…" Jon said. "I think she is changing. Perhaps she regrets what she had to do to your father. She has pledged everything to the great war. She lost a dragon to it. And she no longer talks of her rightful claim. I chose to bend the knee only when she stopped demanding it."

 _But it's Daenerys who should be bending the knee to you!_ Sam thought, but he knew that he could not say it. He might have said it, he thought, had the conversation gone another way. Had Jon staunchly defended Daenerys' actions, Sam might have retorted that Daenerys was not the rightful queen, that she had no right to demand obedience from any lord of Westeros. But Jon deserved better than to have the truth thrust at him in anger and used as a weapon.

"I won't cause any trouble because of this," Sam said. "I won't demand vengeance. I won't hate Daenerys. I won't. But…"

"But no matter the rights and wrongs of it," Jon said, "you've lost your father, and that's _hard._ "

Sam sat down again, and leant forward, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. "I don't know what to do," he confessed. "I don't know what I _should_ do. There's my mother to think of, and my sister. I ought to be there for them, but instead I'm here." He raised his head, fingers scraping across his cheeks. "My father disinherited me, and I took my oaths as a brother of the Night's Watch, but there's no-one else. I'm the only male Tarly left alive. I even have my father's sword. Did you know that? I brought it with me to Winterfell, because… because I thought it needed to be used against the only enemy that really matters, not just to prop up my father's pride."

Jon's eyes widened. "He gave you his sword?" 

"Oh, no." Sam gave a mirthless smile. "I stole it. I don't know why he never came after me. He knew I was going to Oldtown. Maybe he didn't notice, not until it was time to go to war. If he'd had Heartsbane in his hand, perhaps he wouldn't have…" He stopped. His hands slumped to his lap, and he looked Jon full in the face. "Should I go home again, despite my oaths, despite… everything?"

Jon looked away, then back again. "I am not the one to hold you to your oaths, when I walked away from mine. I cannot demand--"

"No," said Sam sharply, surprising himself with his sudden ferocity. "You cannot demand." He let out a breath, trying to lessen the sting of his words. "But a king can release a man from an oath. A king can undo a disinheriting, just as a king can legitimise a bastard. A king can do pretty much anything he pleases, if he wants to."

"And if it is right," said Jon. "But I am only king in the North, and Horn Hill doesn't recognise my claim. _I_ couldn't do this, just as I would never command that you stay here with me. But if you want it…"

"But that's just it!" Sam exclaimed. "I don't. I don't want it. I feel I ought to, for my mother's sake, but what happiness could I get from being a lord in my father's domain? The war is _here._ I've got a sword I can't wield and a whole lot of book learning that means nothing. I don't know if I can do anything, I don't know if I can help at all, but I want to be here. It terrifies me, but where else can I be? I'm not much of a shield, and I don't know how to guard the realms of men, but I want to at least _try._ "

"It terrifies me, too," Jon confessed, his voice little more than a whisper. "But what can any of us do but try?"

******

end of part three


	4. Chapter 4

**Secrets in the Dark: part 4**

When he had read about them as a child, Sam had been disturbed by the thought of a tree with a face. Later, much later, he had chosen to say his Night's Watch vows in front of a weirwood tree. His father's gods had never been any help to him, so he would start his new life by taking his oath in the name of gods that were far older. But even as he had sworn oaths before them, the trees themselves had still unsettled him.

It was only here, at Winterfell, that he was beginning to understand the peace and comfort that Jon and the Starks seemed to feel when they sat beneath the heart tree. The ancient branches protected the godswood from the harshness of the wind and stopped the worst of the falling snow. Even the carved faces could feel like a comfort. They had survived the Long Night, and if another such Long Night came, they would likely survive that, too, enduring long after the fall of men.

Closing his eyes, Sam laid his hand on the pale bark. "My father's dead," he whispered. The leaves were still. There was no answering rustle. "My father," he whispered, "is dead. He disowned me. He despised me. He judged me. And he is no longer alive, to feel such things."

Silence. Nothing. But it hurt a little less, he thought, because he had said it.

He opened his eyes to see Bran approaching, his chair pushed by Sansa Stark. Arya was not with them. Sam hoped that she was with Jon, but he doubted it. Jon was always busy now, sending out orders, organising troops, defending his decisions to the northern lords. Sam still kept away from the hall when the shouting started, knowing that he could not bear to listen to it and stay silent, knowing what he knew.

It was too late to flee without them seeing him. _And why should I?_ he thought. He had every right to be here. He shouldn't feel like an intruder just because he had been born in the south.

"I saw you take your oath beneath a tree like this," Bran said without preamble as he reached the shelter of the tree. "I saw your father send you to the Wall. I saw your father--"

"Stop it!" Sam found himself shouting. "Stop it! Just… don't!" Sansa looked at him sharply. Sam was a little bit scared of her, to be honest, but he curled his hands into fists and carried on. "You say you can see everything. You say you know everything, but you don't. You don't know how to talk to people. You don't know that there are some things that you just shouldn't say, even if you _did_ see them. Just because something's true, it doesn't mean that you should just _tell_ it, just like that, without thinking about what it feels like to hear it."

"Truths need to be told," Bran said in that dreadful calm voice of his. 

"Not all of them," Sam said, and he realised suddenly that even if Jon _had_ known about his father's death and had deliberately kept it from him at their first meeting, Sam would have forgiven him. He would have understood. "Surely even you know that. I mean, if someone like Gilly was here, you wouldn't just…" He stopped himself, because if he said any more, he would be just as guilty as Bran.

But Bran had no such qualms. "Tell her that I know what fate befell her sisters' sons," said Bran. "Tell her that I know what happened between her and her father, alone in the dark."

"But you shouldn't," said Sam, almost crying now. "You mustn't. It's wrong. Every time she looked at you, she'd remember that you'd _seen_ that. Every time she looked at you, she'd remember that you told her, that you hurt her just because you could."

Bran blinked. For a moment, Sam almost thought he saw a spark of emotion there. "Not just because I can," he said. "Never that. It hurt me, too, to become what I am and to become it so swiftly. But it was necessary."

"Necessary," Sam echoed. "Necessary." He let out a breath, his shoulders slumping. "And so it doesn't matter if you prick us. It doesn't matter if we bleed. After all, what do petty human feelings matter in the face of the war to come?"

Bran said nothing for a long while. Sansa opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it again. Her eyes were glistening and her hand on Bran's chair was white with the force of her grip. 

"They mattered to me," said Bran at last. "Once."

Pushing past him, choking back a sob, Sam pushed past him and left without another word. He wasn't sure who he was crying for: his father, himself, or for the ancient being who had once been a boy called Bran.

******

Gilly was late coming to bed. They shared a room, which was quite remarkable, really, although it had taken Sam a few days to realise it. It was a different on a ship or in their anonymous lodgings in Oldtown. There nobody cared if you were sharing a bed with somebody you weren't married to. But Winterfell was one of the great strongholds of Westeros, home of a family renowned for their sense of honour. Great lords might have their mistresses, but they did not flaunt them. Yet somebody – perhaps a steward, but perhaps even Sansa Stark – had given Sam and Gilly a chamber together.

"Where have you been?" he asked, when she was snuggled in beside him under the blankets. 

"With Lady Stark," Gilly said, resting her head on his shoulder. Her hair tickled him, and her breath was warm against his throat. "She sent for me."

"Why?" Sam raised his head from the pillow. "You're no lady's maid."

"And I am no lady." There was an uncharacteristic edge to Gilly's voice. "Is that what you mean? That the only reason a great lady like Lady Stark would ask for me was because she needed a servant?"

"No," said Sam. "I mean… No," he said.

Gilly rolled away from him, but she took his hand as she did so, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft. She knew all about his father now. Although she had no cause to love Randyll Tarly, she had wept for him, because Sam had wept. "I'm sorry, Sam," she said. "I shouldn't have left you alone."

Did a small part of her – a tiny, treacherous part – mourn her own father? The man had been a monster, but for years he had been the only man she had ever known, and he had dominated every part of her life. When you lost a thing like that, it could hit you in unexpected ways. Yet Sam had never thought to wonder. He had never thought to ask.

"No," he said quietly. "It's fine. I've stayed up late lots of other nights without telling you where I was." His hand tightened on hers. "What did Sansa want?"

"I don't really know," Gilly confessed. "She kept looking at me as if she was about to say something, but we didn't really talk about much. About you, a bit."

"Me?" Sam exclaimed.

Gilly chuckled. "Nothing bad." She pushed herself up, leaning on one elbow. "It's just… Sam… She's a great lady, and I'm… not. While I'm with you, I won't be a servant, but I'll never be a lady. So I was afraid of her, and I think… I think she was a little afraid of me, too, because she's never shared a drink with a wildling before. But…"

"But what?" Sam prompted.

"For as long as I can remember," Gilly said quietly, "I spent my life with women. We were close. We had to be. But since I left with you, I've hardly spoken to another woman at all. As I sat there with Lady Stark, I was scared and I didn't know what to say, but at the same time, I thought that it could be… nice." 

Sam closed his eyes. It was true, of course. Gilly had escaped from her world, but she would never truly be part of his. For over a year she had followed him unquestioningly, from Castle Black to Oldtown, and from Oldtown to Winterfell. And he had never thought to wonder what she truly wanted. And to think he had accused Bran Stark of being insensitive!

_But she is only a wildling_ , his father might have said. _She is only a woman._

But his father was dead.

"I need to tell you something, Gilly," Sam said, suddenly making up his mind. "A secret. I didn't want to tell you until I'd told Jon, but I don't know how to tell him, and I've been worrying and worrying about it, all by myself, and I couldn't ask anyone else for help. And, anyway, you know part of it already. It was you who discovered the truth, really. Of course, you didn't understand what you were reading, but, then, neither did I, not at first. So I need to tell you, in case someone says something about Prince Rhaegar and you say, 'oh, yes, I was reading about him!' and it all comes out from there. And… Well, I don't want to keep secrets from you, not after everything we've been through together, and…"

"Sam," Gilly said, cutting through his ridiculous babbling. "What secret, Sam?"

So Sam told her. He told her all of it. "And I don't know what to do," he said, when he had finished. "I don't know how to tell him. It will change everything for him. He's based his whole life on the belief that he's Lord Stark's bastard son. And… Well, quite apart from that, there's the whole Daenerys question to consider. She invaded Westeros because she thinks she's the rightful queen. What if she disputes Jon's claim? What if she takes her armies and leaves? What if she turns on him? What if…?" 

His words trailed away. Reaching over, Gilly took him in her arms and held him chastely, offering comfort in the dark. "We don't have kings north of the Wall," she said. "I don't know anything about your politics. But when I think of little Sam growing up and not knowing I'm his mother…"

"But his mother didn't want it told," Sam protested. "Lord Stark kept it secret for rest of his life, although it must have torn him apart to tell such a lie. But that was to save Jon from King Robert," he added, "and King Robert's dead, so maybe..." He shook his head. "But Lord Stark's dead, too, and Jon's mother. So all I'll be doing is giving him one dead mother and robbing him of his three living siblings and his memories of Lord Stark."

"He needs to know who his mother was," Gilly insisted. 

"But it's more complicated than that!" Sam protested. "You don't understand. You're not--"

Not from the Seven Kingdoms. Not one of us. 

He didn't say it, but he had thought it for a moment. Perhaps he had more of his father in him than he had thought. 

******

_I will tell him today_ , Sam thought. He had lain awake for half the night, worrying about it. Or maybe he would present it as a hypothetical dilemma about somebody else. What if you had discovered a secret that would affect a friend, he might ask. What if you had discovered something huge, something that would change their world for ever, something that could never be taken back once it had been told? Should you tell them, even if the truth might hurt them terribly?

But that would be cheating, wouldn't it? Because Jon was honest to a fault, and of course he would say that Sam needed to tell the truth. The only reason for Sam to pose such a question would be to absolve himself of responsibility for the telling. It was Jon, not Sam, who had made the decision. Jon had asked for the truth. Sam had merely obeyed. 

_I will tell him today_ , Sam thought again. 

Perhaps Jon would surprise him by being delighted at the news. Sam himself had been thrilled, briefly, back when he had first found out. It was the stuff of songs. Jon had always thought of himself as a bastard, but he was true born, and secretly a king. Many men would be overjoyed to find themselves the rightful heir of the Iron Throne. 

But not Jon, Sam knew. Never Jon. Sam had known this right from the start. Jon took no delight in ruling. He commanded merely because it was a duty that had to be done. 

Sam watched him now as he walked across the inner ward, stopping every now and then to speak to men under his command. He wore his kingship well, but it was a heavy burden nevertheless. _I will tell him…_ Sam thought, but he made no move. He stood unmoving on the wall-walk, his hands pressed against the cold stone.

Sam looked up, surveying the towers of Winterfell. Was that Sansa at a high tower window? Bran was in the godswood again, he thought. Looking down again, he saw Arya Stark leaving the smithy. As he watched, she turned in the door to look back at someone inside. She was smiling as she walked away.

And then Daenerys Targaryen was there, talking to Jon on the far side of the yard. Sam had still managed to avoid her notice. He wondered if Jon had spoken to her about Sam's father's death. He didn't want to look into her eyes and see that she was unrepentant, but he didn't think he could bear an apology, either. 

"I can never thank you enough," someone said from behind him.

"Oh!" Sam started, almost slipping in the snow. "Oh," he said. "Ser Jorah. I didn't know…"

"That I came with the queen," Ser Jorah finished for him, bowing his head. "I live to serve her."

"Oh," said Sam again, swallowing. "I've been… busy," he said. "I haven't paid much attention to who came here and who didn't. I've been studying, mostly." _Hiding_ , said the treacherous voice of truth inside his own head. _Hiding from her and from everyone who came with her._ "But I'm glad to see you, truly I am. The greyscale stayed away, then?"

"It has stayed away." Ser Jorah smiled, although his face looked like one that did not smile often. "You gave me my life back, at the risk of your own. You allowed me to return to her side. I will never cease to be grateful."

"Oh, it was nothing," Sam said. "I mean, it wasn't nothing. It was your life, and that's not nothing to you – to anyone, I mean. And it was all rather horrible, and that's not nothing, either. I just mean… I had to try," he said. "Nobody else was doing anything. They were just sitting there around that table and talking about how things had always been. They wouldn't let me _help._ "

"You helped," said Ser Jorah with feeling.

Across the courtyard, Jon and Daenerys were standing very close, closer than Jon normally stood when he was talking to someone. They were speaking quickly and quietly. Jon's gloved fingers reached towards her hand, and her hand, unthinking, almost reached for his before they both drew back. Their eyes never left each others' faces.

_They're looking at each other_ , Sam thought, _as if there is nobody else in the world._

"Oh," he breathed as he suddenly understood. " _Oh._ " He turned to Ser Jorah to say something – anything – but Ser Jorah was gazing down at the two of them, his face hewn from stone, bleak and cold.

_Oh_ , thought Sam, as the same coldness crept across his own heart. _Oh._

"I was proud to serve under your father," Sam said, suddenly desperate to draw Ser Jorah's attention away from Jon and his queen. "He saved my life, you know, but I failed him. I didn't manage to send the ravens. That's why… Well, that's not the only reason why I tried to help you, but it's the main one. Because of your father."

The father who had disinherited him, Sam realised. Just like Randyll Tarly, Ser Jeor Mormont had disowned his son. Like Sam, Ser Jorah had had to learn from others about his father's death. Had anyone ever thought to ask him how he felt about it? Had anyone actually told him how it happened? Well, perhaps not all the details – Sam would spare him those – but enough to know that he had died defending what was right, and that Jon had avenged him. 

"I was there when he died." Sam almost touched Ser Jorah on his shoulder, but withdrew his trembling hand before contact was made. "I could tell you about it," he said, "if you want me to."

Ser Jorah was still gazing down at Jon and Daenerys, his hands clenched beside him into tight fists. "I should hear it," he said.

******

The girl looked faintly familiar. Hurrying through the snow, Sam had rushed past her before he remembered who she was. He stopped and returned to her, shielding his eyes against the falling snow. "Meera Reed," he said.

"Samwell Tarly." A smile fluttered briefly across her face. She looked tired, he thought.

"How's… um, Jojen?" He hoped he'd remembered the name right. "Oh, and Hodor! What happened to him?" But even as he said it, he knew what the answer must surely be. _Stupid!_ he cursed himself. _Why don't I ever think?_

"Bran hasn't told you, then," Meera said. "No, of course he hasn't. He'd have to care…" She let out a weary breath. "I'm sorry. Father says I'm being unreasonable. What does it matter if Bran doesn't say the right things? He became what he needed to become. Jojen knew all along that his role was to help Bran fulfil his destiny. He died, and that matters. What Bran said or didn't say afterwards… That… _doesn't._ "

"You should come inside," Sam urged her, because the snow was falling more heavily with every passing minute. By the look of her, she had recently arrived after a long journey. She must be very cold.

"Yes," Meera said. "I was angry when I left, angry that Bran seemed to be dismissing everything we endured, everything we sacrificed for him. Father says it was pride and hurt feelings."

"So he sent you back again?" Sam said. It seemed strange to be talking to her like this. After all, he barely knew her. But nothing felt quite real out here in the snow. He had spent too long with Ser Jorah Mormont, reliving past horrors beyond the Wall. Part of him was still there, and with the snow swirling white around them, it seemed as if he and Meera were the only two people left in the world. He remembered how they had last met, in that liminal space between the Seven Kingdoms and the wild. "He sent you back alone, in this?"

"Not alone," she said. "He said the time had come for us to leave our home. Our people know how to defend themselves, he said, and always have done. But as for us, old loyalties called us, he said, and it was time to honour past pledges. It's time, he said, to come out of hiding and to reveal the truth." She smiled ruefully. "I don't know what truth he's talking about."

"Your father's Howland Reed," Sam said, remembering his genealogies, "lord of the crannogmen."

"Mud men, they call us," Meera said bitterly, "and frog-eaters, but my father was a loyal liegeman to Lord Eddard Stark and his most trusted friend. He went everywhere with him in the wars that put King Robert on the throne, from Winterfell to Dorne, and everywhere in between."

"To Dorne?" Sam said, and, "Everywhere?" _The truth_ , she had said. He had come to reveal the truth.

Sam left her there in the snow, and started to run.

******

end of part four


	5. Chapter 5

**Secrets in the Dark: part 5**

Sam found him eventually in the crypts, standing in front of a woman's statue.

_Too late_ , Sam thought when he saw him there. His step faltered, but he forced his shoulders back and made himself carry on. Torches had been placed in brackets on the wall, but only a few. Apart from the route that led to Jon and the statue, the crypt was a pit of darkness. 

"I used to dream of these crypts," Jon said without turning round. "I was lost in them, searching for something unknown." He gave a bitter laugh, a terrible sound. "Well, now I know what I was looking for." His touched the woman's carved robe, fingers lightly brushing the stone.

This was his mother, Sam realised. This was Lyanna Stark. "Jon…" he began, his voice cracking.

"You knew." Jon's fingers touched his mother's stone fingers, but then he clenched his hand suddenly into a fist. "Bran knew. You knew. Who else? Did everybody know this? Were you laughing--?"

"Of course not!" Sam protested.

"No," said Jon, his shoulders slumping. "That was unfair. You wouldn't laugh." He dragged his hand through his hair. "But you knew. Bran told me so."

"He would!" Sam said bitterly, suddenly furious at Bran Stark who uttered truths without a thought for how they could hurt. "I found it by accident, you see, in something I found in a book – something Gilly found, really. It didn't mean anything by itself, but when Bran told me the part that he knew… Well, it all came together." 

"And to think you were angry with me when you thought I'd kept your father's…" Jon broke off. He clenched his fist again, and Sam couldn't stop himself from flinching, but Jon only let out a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. "No, that was unfair, too. You knew you had to tell me, but you didn't know how to do it. You knew it would hurt."

Sam nodded in desperate agreement. "Jon, I've been tearing myself to pieces these last few days, wondering how to tell you. I didn't want it to come from Bran; you deserve better than that. But the longer I left it, the harder it became." 

"At least you knew I would find it a hard truth to bear." Jon touched the statue again, his fingers ghosting up her arm almost to her face. "If you'd thought that I could take joy in this… If you'd known me that little…" He touched her lips, scarred fingers brushing stone. "That would have been hard to forgive."

"But, Jon…" Sam dared to say. He knew better than to bring up the subject of the Iron Throne. But he couldn't bear to see Jon like this, so quiet, so defeated. "At least…" He swallowed. It might be a comfort to Jon, the thing that he was about to say. But if it was not… Well, perhaps it was better for Jon to be angry. Perhaps it was better to Jon to be angry at Sam. "At least you know who your mother was. I know how much it bothered you, not knowing that."

"Ah yes. Now I know." Again that bitter laugh, quiet and dreadful. Jon was weeping, Sam realised suddenly. There was no trace of it in his voice, but in the light of the torches, his cheeks shone wet with tears. "And I know, too, that Ned Stark, the man I thought was my father, the man I have strived to emulate my entire life, lied to me every day that I was alive."

"To protect you," Sam protested, but, really, what could he say? It had never occurred to him that it would be this, rather than anything else, that Jon would find the hardest to bear. But it should have, really, shouldn't it? It was obvious in retrospect. Ned Stark's fabled honour lay at the heart of everything that Jon had become. "He did it because he'd made a--"

"He lied," Jon said. "Barely a week ago, I stood in the Dragonpit and almost ruined everything because I told the truth. I refused to lie even to save the truce. I knew the consequences but…" He walked away. Faltering, Sam followed him, but Jon stopped after just a few paces, standing in front of another statue, this one depicting a man. "If everyone lies all the time, I said, then words stop meaning anything. And I really believed it. I still do. But all the time, my father--" He broke off, his breath catching in something that was almost a sob. 

"You should still call him father," Sam said staunchly, "because he _was_ your father in all the ways that matter." _And a far better father than mine_ , he could have said, but dared not. _And Randyll Tarly was my father by blood._

"Yes," said Jon wearily, "just as Arya and Sansa are still my sisters in my heart. After all," he said, "I have called you my brother, although we don't share any blood. What is blood, after all? I said as much to Theon Greyjoy. Theon Greyjoy!" He shook his head. "He was both Stark and Greyjoy, I said to him, and Ned Stark was his father in all the ways that matter, as you just said." He scraped his hand through his hair. "It's an easier thing to say to someone else than to believe. Lord Stark lied." He looked at the stone carved face that must surely depict Lord Eddard Stark. "You lied. You aren't who I thought you were. You lied."

"But he had to," Sam protested. "To protect you."

"I know that!" Jon whirled round, facing him fully for the first time. _I've done it now!_ Sam thought. _He's going to hit me!_ But, "I know that," Jon just said again, more quietly. "I understand that much. But he should have told me. He should have told Lady Catelyn; she wouldn't have told anyone else. She hated me because she thought I was the result of her husband's broken vows. He let me grow up under the shadow of _that._ "

"Because his sister made him promise," Sam dared to say. Oh, but his heart was pounding with the terror of all this! "She made him promise to lie. And he was a man of honour. So he could either lie, or break a promise. There was no way to do both. He had to choose which honourable course to follow."

"Then he should never have promised," Jon said. He turned back to the statue, and for a moment, Sam thought he was going to pound it with furious fists. "You should never have promised," Jon said bitterly. 

Then, pushing past Sam, he turned and walked away.

******

Jon would not see him. Jon would not see anyone. Oh, he was still King in the North, and the commander of the armies that would fight the dead. He was everywhere in the courtyards and the training grounds, giving orders, sometimes even playing Master-at-Arms. He fought for the future in the great hall, telling the gathered lords what needed to be done.

But he was never alone with anyone. Or at least, he was never alone with Sam.

Did anyone else even know the truth, Sam wondered. Did Jon intend to lock it up again and turn the key? Did Daenerys know?

Sam shivered, pulling his cloak more tightly around his body. Daenerys was Jon's aunt! Before, Sam had thought of Daenerys merely as the displaced claimant who would have to yield to Jon's claim. But she was his aunt, and if Sam was right about his suspicions…

No, he thought. Jon and Daenerys were drawn to each other, but surely it hadn't gone _that_ far. He hoped not, anyway, because that, too, would hurt Jon terribly. The Targaryen kings were happy to marry their sisters, but Jon was of the north and shared the northerner's horror at such things. Craster had disgusted him. Mind you, Craster should have disgusted every man with a heart, so it wasn't a good comparison, but, still…

"Oh!" Sam moaned. "I wish this hadn't happened!" 

He started to walk around the ramparts, slapping his hands across his body in an attempt to keep warm. Why did it always happen: that things that should have been marvellous turned out to be horrible? It had happened with the Citadel. It was happening now with the revelation of Jon's birth. But, then, it happened the other way round, sometimes. After all, Castle Black had been awful at first, but had ended up being the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Because of Jon. If not for Jon, Sam wouldn't have survived the first few weeks. And now Jon was…

He stopped, pausing mid-slap, realising that he was about to bump into Tyrion Lannister. Like Sam, Tyrion was shrouded in furs, making him seem wider than he was tall. Unlike Sam, he had been gazing outwards, across the snow-covered hills to the north.

"I climbed to the top of the Wall, once," Tyrion said without preamble. "Pissed off the top of it, actually. It was the coldest place I'd ever been, but this… Brr!" He shivered theatrically. "Turns out that winter in Winterfell is even colder."

"It's colder still beyond the Wall," said Sam.

"And you've got layers of fat to keep you warm," Tyrion said. "I'd just freeze into a dwarf-shaped icicle. Oh, don't look like that," he said, although Sam was fairly sure that he hadn't looked like anything at all. "You're fat, I'm a dwarf, Jon Snow's a bastard. Call yourself by the name of what you are, because the world will try to turn it into a weakness. Don't let them. That's what I told our King in the North when he was just a sulky boy, angry at being excluded from a feast."

"Oh," said Sam. He wanted to walk on past, but perhaps he shouldn't. He hadn't spoken to Tyrion Lannister since the man had told him about his father's death. If he refused to talk to him now, perhaps Tyrion would think that he held a grudge. Although perhaps Tyrion didn't remember it at all. He _had_ been quite drunk, after all. 

He wondered if Tyrion had talked to Sansa yet. He doubted that he would ever know. He knew that he would never ask.

"Has Jon…" he began. "Has he _said_ anything? Has anything been… _said_?" _Jon Snow is a bastard_ , Tyrion had said, but perhaps that was meant ironically. Everyone knew that Tyrion Lannister liked his jokes. "About…" Sam said. " _Things._ "

"He has said many things," said Tyrion. "One might say that he's been uncharacteristically talkative these last few weeks, now that he's got a war to lead. But that's not what you mean. By 'things' you mean 'thing.' But what thing, I wonder? His tragic death and miraculous resurrection, perhaps? Oh, he tried to keep it from us, but Ser Davos is an honest and open man, and it didn't take much fishing to discover _that_ little story. So although he hasn't said anything, as such, things have been said."

"Oh." Sam swallowed. "Yes. That was what I meant."

Perhaps Jon intended to keep it secret forever. _But he won't be allowed to!_ Sam wailed. Howland Reed hadn't come all this way to see the secret locked away and lost. Bran certainly wouldn't stay silent. Bran said it was important that Jon knew the truth, but he didn't just mean important to _Jon._ To Gilly, the most important thing was that Jon knew who his mother was, but Bran wouldn't see it like that. Bran saw the wider picture, and human feelings were an irrelevance to him.

"Brr!" he said, keen to change the subject before Tyrion said anything else about Jon's death and why he was special enough to come back. "It really is cold."

"And yet I keep coming here," Tyrion said, "to stand here and look to the north. It's quite unlike me, really. I'm not an outdoor sort of fellow. Give me a flagon of wine and a nice warm whore, and a book; I always did like books."

"So did I," said Sam.

"But I look to the north," said Tyrion, "and it feels _cold._ In the south, we've never really believed in the horrors north of the Wall, but if ever we _have_ begun to believe in them, we've known that there's a Wall to hold them out. And now there isn't."

"There is," Sam protested. 

"Not really." Tyrion shook his head. "The dead have breached the Wall. They're out _there._ " He gestured with his gloved hand towards the endless expanse of white. "Nothing between us and the dead but old castles and scattered holdings and empty space. This," he said, clapping his hand on the stone rampart, "is now the tallest wall between the dead and the realms of men."

Sam could not speak. He could barely breathe. Standing beside Tyrion Lannister, he looked north, towards the heart of winter, and he shivered. He shivered, and found himself unable to stop.

******

end of part five


	6. Chapter 6

**Secrets in the Dark: part 6**

It was becoming difficult to tell when night ended. Shrouded in snow and thick cloud, whole days were spent in semi-darkness. It was as if all colours were slowly being stolen from the world, leaving behind just shades of grey. 

After another night with little sleep, Sam jolted awake from a shallow doze, suddenly sure that he had heard a dragon. Still half in a dream, he pulled on some clothes and stumbled outside. He had no idea if it was still night or if it counted as early dawn. The world was a sea of grey darkness, and the cold clutched at his throat like claws. 

He had still not seen a dragon. Not properly, anyway. Daenerys had not shown her dragons when she had first arrived at Winterfell, since their very presence would have looked like an attempt to intimidate the men of the north into accepting her a queen. Since then, her dragons had done their hunting far away in the wilderness, leaving nearer game for the forces gathering at Winterfell. After the news came about the fall of Eastwatch, the dragons stayed away entirely. "Because the Night's King has a dragon now," Jon had told him. "If people look up and see a dragon, they might think…"

"That the dead are already here," Sam had said, but he had looked up anxiously as he had said it, unable to stop himself. 

"Yes." Jon had nodded. That had been _before_ , of course: before Jon knew that secrets lay between them.

Another cry, and then nothing. But if a dragon was here, surely somebody would know about it. The Night's King would come with death and fury, not quiet like this, like a thief in the night. _It's one of the good dragons_ , Sam thought as he moved forward, driven both by curiosity and a dreadful, quaking fear. He forgot for a moment that one of those 'good dragons' had been the weapon that killed his father. Even when he remembered, he kept walking on. 

He passed through a small courtyard where footprints had been left within the last hour, just beginning to be covered again with fresh frost. Out through an archway, along a covered passage, through a gate. Horn Hill was a fine fortress, but Winterfell was vast, its walls encircling more space than the walls of many a sizeable town. Sam came to the godswood and the grassy space around it, larger than some villages but still within the outer walls. 

Crows were circling somewhere beyond the trees, cawing in alarm. Sam's steps faltered, but then he saw Ghost standing ahead of him, still and solid, almost as if he was on guard. 

"But you know me, don't you," Sam murmured as he neared him. "You'll let me pass."

Ghost did. Passing the direwolf, Sam skirted the godswood, following the footsteps. _I should go back_ , he thought, _but Ghost let me pass. Ghost would have stopped me if…_

Something vast moved ahead of him. _A dragon!_ he thought. _It really is!_ But it was hard to see in the near darkness. If a dragon was here, it was crouching beneath the walls. This was where the Dothraki would camp, Sam knew, although he knew that Jon worried about billeting them so close to the trees of the Old Gods. "But there is nowhere else," Jon had said, and even then, the space wasn't big enough for them, and many would have to camp outside the safety of the walls.

Something touched his hand. Sam gasped, but it was only Ghost. The direwolf must have been following him silently, and now he had moved up to walk close beside him, as he so often walked with Jon. Less often now, though. Less often at Winterfell than at the Wall. 

"Daenerys," he heard Jon say, not far ahead of him now. 

The dragon's bulk moved; perhaps that vast shape was its head, slowly being raised. Sam's feet kept on walking, Ghost at his side. He made himself stop: one step, another, and then a third before he finally stood still.

"Daenerys," Jon said again. "I don't _want_ the Iron Throne."

If Daenerys made a reply, it was not in words. It was in a touch, perhaps, or a look that Jon could see with dark-adapted eyes.

"I really don't," said Jon. "How could anyone think that I would? How could they think that? It could be melted down into scrap, for all I care about it. These last few years, there has been so much death, so much misery, because everyone was squabbling over who got to sit on that throne, when all the while, the true enemy marched on the realms of men, unchecked."

"Yet it is yours by right, it seems." Daenerys' voice was low and level, no expression in it at all. 

"By what right?" Jon shouted. "By what right?" he said again, far more quietly. "By the right of blood? What does that even mean? My true father was Ned Stark. Why should I sit on a throne I have never seen because I share the blood of a prince I have never known? I know nothing of politics. Until I came to Dragonstone, I had never left the north."

"And yet you plan to command the armies of the living against the dead," said Daenerys in that cold, distant voice.

"That's different!" Jon protested. "That's not about blood. I've faced them twice; I'm the only one who has. The Night's King has looked into my eyes and I have looked into his. Nobody else can say that. And I know the Wall, and the wildlings will follow me, and the lords of the North, at least for now." Sam heard him sigh, a ragged, painful breath. "But that's not about blood, but about deeds. The northern lords follow me because they think I'm a Stark, but everyone else… But everything else…"

"Happened because you earned it," Daenerys said quietly.

"Earned it?" said Jon. "I don't know. I've made mistakes – such dreadful mistakes. But everything I did, I did because I was the person who happened to be there at the right time. Not because of blood. One of the bravest men I ever knew died defending Castle Black from a giant. Yet he had no name that the world would recognise and his blood was as common as muck."

"But if this is what you believe," said Daenerys, "then what must you think of me?" Her voice was soft, but behind her the dragon started to stir.

_Careful!_ Sam thought, as Ghost pressed against his leg, quivering with tension. _Jon, be careful!_

"Because I am one of those who has squabbled for the Iron Throne," said Daenerys. "I came to Westeros as its rightful queen. I repeated my right. I demanded that everyone bow the knee, as was my right. And yet I have never seen the Iron Throne and my claim comes from a father I have never known. So what does that make me?" she asked, her voice soft yet as keen as a knife. "What does that make me in your eyes?"

"I don't…!" Jon protested. "It isn't…" 

Ghost padded forward, just half a dozen steps, and then stopped. Moment by moment, word by word, the darkness around them was fading, turning into the grey of dawn. People would be coming here soon. People would see them; would hear this. It should never be heard.

"All my life," Daenerys said, "I clung to one thing above all others: that I was the blood of the dragon. After my brother died, after my husband died, it became the one thing that kept me going. I was the rightful heir to the Seven Kingdoms and one day I would take what was mine."

"But, Daenerys…"

"No." It was hard and commanding, like a slap. "All my life," she said, "and now I find that it was a lie."

"But it wasn't a lie!" Jon said. "You won the love and loyalty of vast armies in Essos. You won the love and loyalty of whole cities. They owed no allegiance to your father or your name. They had barely heard of the Seven Kingdoms or the family names our lords prize so highly. They followed you because of _you_ , because of the things you had done for them. And that's why I bent the knee: not because of your father, but because of your deeds. Because of _you._ "

"But I am what I am because of my father's blood," said Daenerys. Sam could almost see her now, her hair silver-pale in the growing light. "I would have done none of those things had I not had the certainty that I had the right. I needed the strength that that certainty gave me…"

She stopped. Ghost took another step forward. _I shouldn't be here_ , Sam thought, but far too late. He should have retreated the second he had heard Jon speak her name. 

"Do you hate me now?" Jon asked, his voice naked in the dark.

Perhaps Daenerys laughed, and perhaps she was crying. "No, Jon, I could never hate you. I… It will take time. And this isn't the time to worry about who might sit on the Iron Throne, when there might not be a throne by the end of winter, or anyone to rule over but the dead. I am still committed to the cause. I will still fight beside you. I will still…"

_Still what?_ Sam thought, but Jon did not ask it. Daenerys answered, though, although Sam could barely catch her words. _Love you_ , he thought, but perhaps it was not that. 

"Daenerys," Jon said; just her name. 

They were silent for a very long time. Sam took one step backwards, and then another.

"Perhaps I should have realised earlier," Daenerys said at last. "My dragons were drawn to you from the start. And tonight I longed for Drogon, but Rhaegal came instead." She sighed, and there were tears there, after all, Sam was sure. "I saw him in a vision once, my brother Rhaegar. He believed that a son of his would be the Prince Who Was Promised, that his song would be the song of ice and fire. Ice and fire. Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. The blood of the First Men and the blood of old Valyria. Perhaps that's why this matters: not because of the Iron Throne, but because it means that you are destined to lead the living against the dead."

"Stannis Baratheon believed that of himself," Jon said, "but Stannis was wrong and Stannis died."

"Yes." There was just enough light for Sam to see the dragon's eye, glinting in the early dawn. "And my brother Rhaegar was not the paragon I used to think he was, but just a man, and he, too, was sometimes wrong, and he, too, is dead." She sighed. "Children, you called us once, and that's what we are: just children, striving in the dark. Perhaps we will know the truth of it. Perhaps we never will."

"I will do my duty," Jon said, "regardless of prophecy, heedless of blood."

Sam could see Daenerys more clearly now, and saw her raise her hands to her face, not like a legendary Targaryen, not like the queen who had executed Sam's father with dragonfire, but just like anyone else. "For years I have thought I was the last of my line, that I was the only Targaryen, all alone. You said that when you heard the news, your first thought was not of the Iron Throne, but of your family: of the father and siblings that were no longer yours."

"It was," said Jon, although Sam had not heard him say so. How long had they been talking together out there in the dark?

"It was my thought, too," Daenerys said quietly. "Not of the Iron Throne. Not of my claim. But that I now had family, and that I was glad that it was you. Even if…" Her voice caught. "Even if you hate yourself for what happened between us. Even if we will never have that again. Even if so, I am glad that it's you, Jon. Aegon. Jon."

And finally, and far too late, Sam found the strength to move. Slowly he edged backwards, step by faltering step, until he could no longer hear them.

******

Once again, Sam stood faltering in front of a door. He could hear faint voices coming from within. Two guards flanked the doorway, but they were looking at him impassively and did not shoo him away. Presumably Jon had told them that Sam was a trusted friend, welcome to attend his councils. He had told Sam the same, but Sam had always stayed away.

_Because I know things that Jon does not_ , Sam had said to himself on other days.

_Because Daenerys will be there. Because she had my father killed. Because she might say something. Because I might reply._

That much was still true. That much would always be true. _But everyone in Winterfell is preparing to face something that terrifies them._ He raised his head; straightened his spine. He could do this little thing. He could do this much. 

Sam walked forward, and the guards parted to let him in. He opened the door softly, but not softly enough. Everyone saw him come in. Only Jon and Ser Jorah acknowledged him, Jon with a smile and Jorah with a nod. The council continued from where it had paused, resuming as if he had not come in.

"…and my Dothraki riders will be here in two days," Daenerys was saying. "It can be cold at night upon the Dothraki Sea, but not like this. The cold will hit them hard and their horses will be slowed by the snow. But they are a hardy people and their horses are the best in the world."

"We will struggle to provision them," said Sansa Stark. She was across the table from Tyrion Lannister, as far away as could be. Tyrion leant forward, watching her as she spoke, but Sansa was looking only at Daenerys, a spark of challenge in her eyes.

"They will ride onwards within days," Daenerys said, "to further reinforce the holdings of the far north. As we have agreed."

Jon glanced at her, then away. "As will the Unsullied," he said. "As will the armies that Queen Cersei has promised, if their captains are willing. If Cersei sends more ships, we will also send a force from White Harbour to come upon the dead from behind."

"The armies will not come." Bran spoke up suddenly, looking at nobody and nothing. "There will be no ships. Cersei Lannister lied." 

Sam's eyes flickered from face to face. Sansa looked at her sister. Jon and Daenerys looked at each other, and Sam felt a sharp spurt of gladness about that. Tyrion alone was staring at Bran with a look of dawning dread.

"The armies will not come," Bran said again. "She seeks to tighten her grip upon the Iron Throne, never caring about the cost that others will be forced to pay. Nothing matters to her but power. Nothing matters to her but her so-called _right._ "

Sam looked down at his clasped hands, then sneakily looked up while keeping his head bowed. He remembered the things he had heard in the dark. He wondered how Daenerys would react.

But she was placid, every inch the queen. "So she means to betray us. She means to cement her hold on the Seven Kingdoms, while sending me away to the north. How she must have laughed!"

"Your grace," Jon said, shooting a quick urgent glance at her; almost reaching for her hand, then snatching his own hand away.

_He hasn't told them yet_ , Sam realised. _Only Daenerys._ He realised something else a moment later. _It's because of his sisters that he hasn't_ , he thought. _Arya and Sansa, but Arya most of all._ Tyrion, Ser Davos, Lady Brienne and the rest of them, these Jon would happily tell – or perhaps not happily, but at least without great pain. But he wanted, even if just for one more day, to still have sisters.

Daenerys stood up, beautiful and regal and terrible. It was hard for Sam to remember that he had heard her weeping in the dark. "But, unlike Cersei, I will honour my promises. I have pledged my armies to this fight, and here I will stay until the war is won or lost."

It sounded like a mighty declaration: something that should have come with trumpets and applause. But Bran looked through her as if her words were nothing. "Jaime Lannister comes," he said. "He believed her promises. When he found out they were false, they argued. And then he walked away."

"What?" Tyrion shook his head like a sleeper waking up. "Jaime's finally broken away from Cersei? He's on his way here?"

Nobody, Sam would realise afterwards, ever questioned Bran's knowledge, or asked how he knew what he knew. Perhaps they had done so in the past, but that time had passed. 

"He is," said Bran. "The first snows of winter fell on King's Landing as he rode away from her."

"Then he needs to die!" said Arya Stark, leaping to her feet. "He tried to kill you! He pushed you out of the tower! If only I'd known when I was in King's Landing… If only you'd told us earlier…"

"He must be tried and judged for his crimes," said Sansa Stark, the lady of Winterfell.

Tyrion opened his mouth, then closed it again. He wouldn't dare speak in his brother's defence, of course, for fear that anything he said would be dismissed as worthless. He looked sick. 

Jon stood up, slow and weary. "We need every sword that is offered to us," he said, "and every sword arm. We cannot afford to bear grudges. We are living, and they are the dead. Everything else pales into insignificance in the light of that."

_Yes_ , Sam breathed. _Yes…_

"But Jaime Lannister is the Kingslayer," said Jon softly. "He swore a sacred oath, and he betrayed it. He killed the king he had sworn to defend."

"Because that king was going to murder thousands of innocent people!" It was Lady Brienne, of all people, who leapt to Ser Jaime's defence. "Should he have kept his oath even if that meant condoning a massacre?" All of a sudden she seemed to become aware that all eyes were upon her. She looked down, as if surprised to find herself on her feet. "I travelled with him for many months," she said, as she sat down again. "I believe that there is a good man there inside, just one that cannot see clearly when his sister is concerned."

"He has seen clearly now," Bran said. He turned to face Arya, although whether his eyes were truly seeing her, Sam was unable to tell. "And before you add him to your list, remember this. It was necessary that I fell, and so it was necessary for him to push me."

At last Tyrion found the courage to speak. "I would beg for clemency, your grace." He was addressing Daenerys, but his eyes moved first to Sansa and then to Jon. "Watch him, if you like. Watch him like a hawk. But if he is coming alone… If he has finally broken away from Cersei, the lodestone of his life, then I urge you to give him a chance. We need every sword indeed. Let us win this war before we cast recriminations."

Jon closed his eyes, then opened them again. "Lord Stark would not have let this pass," he said.

Arya looked up sharply at that. Sansa frowned slightly, the muscles tightening around her eyes. But Tyrion just looked at Jon without blinking. "But Ned Stark is no more," Tyrion said, "and the world he inhabited has gone. The dead are coming. What else can matter but that?"

_Many things_ , thought Sam, as Jon said, "Many things." Then Jon shook his head, looking deeply tired. "But in the Night's Watch, we judged a man not by his past, but by the way he acted when he was asked to do what was right. For my part, at least, I will give him a chance to prove himself true." He looked at Sansa as he said it, and then Arya, and Daenerys last of all.

"Thank you," said Tyrion, "your grace."

The others chose to say nothing at all.

******

end of part six


	7. Chapter 7

**Secrets in the Dark: part 7**

Sam wasn't sure how it happened, but he found himself walking next to Jon and Ghost in the hallway. Then he found himself following them into Jon's room. Then he found himself accepting a glass of wine and settling down in the chair beside the fire. 

He supposed that meant that Jon had forgiven him. Or maybe Jon had never blamed him in the first place. He just didn't know. He didn't know anything, really. He just sat there and sipped the wine, enjoying a silence that he hoped was companionable, and not daring to break it. 

"Arya wants to go to King's Landing," said Jon said at last. Ghost shifted at his feet, raising his head like a dog hearing a distant sound. "She says she can get close to Queen Cersei. She says…" Jon looked into the fire, his face pained. "She says she has the right face to wear."

"What does that even mean?" Sam took another long sip of the wine.

"I know," said Jon. "I wish I did not, but I know." He scraped his hand across his face. "I fear I'm losing her, Sam. That's why I haven't told her yet, about… _this._ And if I can't tell her, I can't tell anyone else. I've not been much of a brother to her these last few years, but at least she still thinks that I _am_ her brother, even if she's become something that I…"

_Become what?_ Sam did not ask it. He had said far too many foolish, rash, probing things these last few days. He would stay silent now.

"She has killed," Jon said. "My little sister Arya has killed more men than I have, and has killed them without mercy and without giving them a chance to fight back. And that scares me. That horrifies me. But I love her still. What does that make me, that I love her still?"

Sam looked down into his glass, watching the fire's reflections fragment as he swirled the wine. "You've killed. You had to."

"I have," Jon agreed. "But…" He shook his head. "Arya says that death is a god, but I have seen death, and it is... nothingness. It is no god, and no man alive should serve it."

Sam shivered. Why was he so cold, when the fire in the hearth was so near? He took a long mouthful of wine, feeling it burn into the heart of him, but he was still cold. "She was so very young," he said, "when they had her father killed. She was alone and afraid, adrift in a cruel world that meant her harm. If that made her turn out wrong…" He shook his head, trying to recall the last few words. "I mean," he said, "if that led her to seek the comfort of path that allowed her to fight back, to survive a little longer, then perhaps…"

"She cannot be blamed for it," Jon finished. "And I don't." He sighed, the firelight casting deep shadows around his face. "And I cannot help but think that we might need her… _skills_ before the end," he said heavily. "How have we come to this, Sam? That we might need lies and false faces? That we forgive the man who tried to murder a little boy? That we see a child become a cold-hearted killer, and tell ourselves that her skills might be _necessary_? I'm glad Ned Stark isn't my father, because he would hate me if he could see me now."

"No," said Sam. "No. Jon, there's nothing wrong with forgiving past wrongs. If Lord Stark would have hated you for doing that, then he was _wrong_. There's nothing wrong with understanding. You don't have to condone, just understand. Surely it's better than… Well, better than judging? We need to draw together now. We're all broken. We're all scared. We can't blame. We can't hate."

_Too much wine_ , he thought. _I'm babbling. Talking nonsense._ He still hadn't dared look Queen Daenerys in the eyes. He still hadn't dared confront the consequences of the wrong that might or might not lie between them.

"You've always been wiser than me," Jon said, his eyes glinting wet in the fickle light of the fire. "And how can I judge Arya for changing, when I, too, have changed? I am not the brother she used to love, so many years and a lifetime ago." 

"Because of your parentage?" Sam said. "I'm sure it won't make any difference to--"

"Not because of that," said Jon. "My birth makes no difference to who I am: to the strength in my arm and the things that I know. I was raised by Ned Stark. I took my oaths as a brother of the Night's Watch. I ranged beyond the Wall. I betrayed my vows with Ygritte and I betrayed Ygritte for my vows. I fight the dead. I died. I begged for help from two queens. I am not who I was, but I've been made by what I've seen and what I've done and what I've failed to do. Not by blood. Not by a name."

Sam's mouth was dry, unspoken words dying in his throat. He moistened his lips and took another sip of wine. "Jon…" he began, then realised that he had no idea what he had been about to say.

"This will not change my course," Jon said. "I will do what I have to do, when the moment presents itself. What more can any of us do?"

_But so few of us manage it_ , Sam thought, thinking of all his failures and all the times that he had run, or turned away from a closed door. 

"This makes no difference," Jon said. "I told Theon Greyjoy… " His fingers curled into Ghost's thick pelt. "I makes no difference to what I must do, only to…"

Sam had another sip of wine. _But what if it really does make a difference?_ he thought, remembering the prophecy Daenerys had talked about in the dark. _What if there is power in this mingled blood of yours?_ But, if so, the power would probably have existed even if Jon had never learned about his parentage. Oh, but it was all so complicated!

"Are you going to keep it secret, then?" Sam asked. "Not tell anyone else at all?" 

"After I condemned Lord Stark for living a lie?" Jon gave a rueful smile. 

Sam hated hearing him say 'Lord Stark' about the man he had always called father. "Maybe he didn't mean to live a lie," he said. "When he found your mother dying, maybe he just… just did what he had to do, when the moment presented itself, just like you said."

"Yes." Jon gave a rueful smile. "Yes, he did. And the lie was necessary, or so Bran tells me. As he was shaped by falling, I was shaped by that lie. I needed to believe that I was a bastard, you see. Because that was what drove me to join the Night's Watch. And if I hadn't joined the Night's Watch, I wouldn't have seen what I saw, and learned what I learned, and become what I have become."

"Strange that Bran should prize a lie," Sam said bitterly, "when he tells truths now without counting the cost."

Then he remembered that this was Jon's brother he was talking about: a boy Jon had once loved; a damaged young man he doubtless still loved. But Jon just sighed. "How we have all changed, the children of Ned Stark. Bran. Sansa. Arya." He paused a moment. "Me."

"Everyone, really," said Sam.

"Yes." Jon sank his fingers more deeply into Ghost's pelt. For his part, the direwolf leaned into Jon's touch, pressed so close that it seemed he never meant to leave. _Because he knows he's part of you_ , Sam thought, _as much as the dragon. More than the dragon, really._ Because Rhaegar Targaryen had given Jon his blood, but Ned Stark had given him everything else that mattered. 

"But I haven't changed," Sam burst out desperately, surprisingly himself. "Or not enough. I'm still craven. I'm still useless. What can I actually do? _Useful_ things, I mean. I'm no fighter. You're about to head out to fight a second War for the Dawn, and what use will I be when you do that? I thought I'd find wonderful secrets in books--"

"You found out about dragonglass, Sam," Jon said.

"Yes, yes." Sam flapped his hand. "But you're the one who has killed White Walkers with Valyrian Steel. You're the one who discovered that killing a White Walker kills the dead under his command. You're the hero here, the Prince--"

"No," said Jon desperately. "Not that." 

"Not that," Sam conceded, although he still thought it might be true. "But what can I do? Your sister Sansa will hold Winterfell after you've left. I expect Tyrion Lannister will stay, too, because he's not really a fighter, either, but he's clever and he can play the game of politics far better than I can."

"Politics won't be needed," Jon said, "when the dead arrive."

"Of course they will!" Sam protested. "When the northern lords learn that you're a secret Targaryen, it will all be about politics!" He had blurted it out almost before realising that he was going to say it. Oh, but he really shouldn't have drunk the wine! 

"I will make it clear to them that blood doesn't matter," Jon said. "That we are fighting for our very lives. That we need to stand together. I don't care if they stop calling me king and I have never made any claim on Winterfell. But in this war, we have to stand together, and lineage matters not at all."

"But not everyone will see it that way." Sam leant forward, the firelight warm on his cheeks. "Some people are petty. Some will squabble about precedence even as the world burns. And Tyrion will know what to say to those who come from the south and Sansa will know what to say to those from the north. But what can I do?"

Jon let out a weary breath. "You have done so many things, Sam. You're wise. You're clever. You make me see things as they really are. You're braver than you know."

But Sam was too lost in self-pity to really hear him. "And I've got a Valyrian steel sword – a stolen Valyrian steel sword – that I don't know how to wield. At the very least, I should give it to someone. I'd give it to you, but you've already got one. Maybe Ser Jorah. Yes! I'll give it to him. Just a loan, though; after that, I'll give it to my sister's son, if she ever has one. But it seems only right, because Ser Jorah's…"

"Sam!" Jon said. "Sam…"

The flames crackled. Ghost raised his head, blinking those unearthly eyes of his. Sam subsided back in the chair, letting his shoulders slump. He felt suddenly, shamefully, on the verge of tears.

"Never think that you're useless here," Jon said at last. "You're my brother and my closest friend. I would like you to stay. Having you here… It… _helps._ "

"I…" Sam stammered. _I'm glad_ , he wanted to say, but he couldn't manage it. 

"But you can't, Sam."

Sam was slow to understand, but then he did. "You want me to leave?" He shook his head; just shook his head endlessly from side to side.

"You need to go back to the Citadel, Sam," Jon said. "Go back with messages from Queen Daenerys and from me. Go back with sworn testimonies and affidavits. Make them believe. Cersei has betrayed us, but we need the south. The maesters have the power to bring them round. Make the maesters fear the dead. Make them believe. Make them take action."

"But I ran away!" Sam's heart was thundering in his chest. "I stole their books!"

"Then take them back with an apology," Jon said. "Be contrite. Make them listen."

"I can't!" Sam moaned. "I can't!" 

But what had Jon said? Jon had denied being a hero. All he had ever done, he said, was what needed to done, when he was there to do it. Sam was no fighter, that much was true. He had killed a wight, but that was a lucky chance, really. What use would he be when the dead fell upon the realms of men? He couldn't play politics. He couldn't build walls and he couldn't persuade Queen Cersei to honour her oaths. Jon seemed to value his company, but Jon would be in the far north, embroiled in battle and war, and Sam was no good at that.

What choice did he have?

He raised his head; squared his shoulders. "I will try," he said. "But I want to do one more thing. Jon, when I go, I want to take proofs of your birth. If the North falls… If all this falls… Then somebody needs to know."

"But what will it matter?" Jon said bitterly. "It shouldn't matter to the world anyway. I have no intention of claiming the Iron Throne. I will leave that to Daenerys who wants it and has been raised to it and will be good at it."

"But you can do that anyway," Sam said, "even if your claim is known. You can voluntarily remove yourself from the succession. Maester Aemon did that, after all. You can hand the whole thing over to Daenerys with your good will, and nobody will argue with you."

Jon shook his head. "But better to have her claim it as her right. I have no wish to become a rallying point for disaffected men. Because that could happen, Sam. You know it could. It has happened before."

Sam opened his mouth; closed it again without producing words. He tried again. "But what if Daenerys dies? What if you defeat the dead but Daenerys dies? What if you defeat the dead, but Cersei survives to make a ruin of what is left of the world of men? What then?"

"Perhaps the world that remains will need no kings and no queens." Jon was sitting upright in his chair, probably entirely unaware of how much he looked like a king upon a throne, even as he spoke of the futility of kings. "It will need men like you, Sam. Men like Tyrion Lannister. Men like Ser Davos. Women like Lady Brienne."

"That's…" Sam swallowed. "That's not true. It might be true one day, perhaps, but not for many years. The small folk look to the lesser lords, the lesser lords look to the great lords, and the great lords look to the king. That's how it's always been. If Cersei and the dead have ravaged the Seven Kingdoms near to breaking, the survivors will need a king or queen. It's the only reality anyone's ever known. It will help them know that things are returning to normal. It will be a comfort, in a way, after the long dark."

"You speak of a future in which kingdoms survive." Jon closed his eyes. "If nothing is left of the Seven Kingdoms but bones, then it will matter not one whit which bones had a claim to the Iron Throne."

"But if any men survive," Sam said, "any men at all, then they will remember. They should remember the truth."

"So you would have them remember Ned Stark as a man who lied in every word?" Jon said bitterly.

"No," said Sam firmly. "They will remember him as a man who kept a promise. They will remember him as a man who kept his promise no matter what it cost him, and it must have cost him terribly, if he was half the man you say he was."

Jon turned his face away. Sam thought there might be tears welling in his eyes, but if there were, they did not fall. "Yes," he said; just that.

******

"I need to leave," Sam told her, when he had told her everything else. 

She was sitting there quietly, her fingers entwined with his. Little Sam stirred in his cradle and both Gilly and Sam began to move, ready to get up and soothe him, but the baby did not wake.

"Jon wants me to go back to Oldtown," Sam said. "To the Citadel."

"The Citadel, Sam?" said Gilly.

Sam looked down at their clasped hands. "I should have told him I'd need to ask you first. I should have said I'd only go if you were happy for me to go. But I didn't. I couldn't. Gilly, we're facing the end of everything we hold dear. Jon's right. This is something that needs to be done, and I'm the one to do it. I had to say yes. I couldn't ask."

He could see Gilly's heartbeat fluttering at her wrist. Her fingers were warm, but everything else was so very cold. "You could ask now, Sam."

"I could ask now," said Sam. "Not about me going, because I've got to go. But about you coming with me. I just took it for granted last time, that you'd come. But I know there's nothing much for you in Oldtown. There's more people here, people for you to talk to. I know you've spent some time with Sansa Stark, and people are nice to you."

"The servants call me 'lady'," Gilly said quietly.

"So I won't presume," Sam said. "And I won't ask. It's just… If you wanted to come with me, it would be… nice. I know I'm nothing special. I know I've not been good to you these last few weeks. I've been distracted. I've assumed you'll always be here. But it would be nice if you were with me, you and little Sam, always. But I won't expect it. I won't ask."

Gilly was crying, he saw, but then she was smiling, too. "Yes," she said.

Perhaps he would marry her, Sam thought. What did it matter that he was nobly born and she was a wildling? They were fighting a war that could destroy them all, and it didn't seem to matter that much what the world thought about such silly things. His Night's Watch vows were a different matter, but they had been made in a world in which the Wall still stood and the Night's Watch alone defended the realms of men. The world had changed now. Vows mattered, but other things mattered, too.

"Yes, I'll come with you," said Gilly, and she was warm and she was alive and for some ridiculous reason, she seemed to love him. "Of course I'll come with you, silly."

******

Some people were heroes. Some people strode through history, the heart of all stories. 

And some stood on the fringes, and just watched. 

If Tyrion ever had a private conversation with Sansa, Sam would never know it. How Arya reacted when Jon told her the truth, he did not know. He had heard only part of Jon's conversation with Daenerys, and even that was far more than he should ever have heard. He had no idea what would happen when Jaime Lannister arrived. He would never see a Dothraki horde ride into battle. He would never see a dragon fly. He would never see the whole of things, only parts. 

And now he was off to Oldtown again, a place he had fled in fury and in shame. 

"I don't know if I can convince them," Sam confessed to Jon on the last morning before the end. "I tried before, you know, but they're set in their ways and they're old and I've given them no cause to trust me."

"Then try again."

Sam sighed. "Because it's all that I can do," he said.

Snow was falling thickly now. No matter how often the servants cleared the inner ward, it was soon piled high again. "A hard time for travelling," Jon said, "but I can spare enough men to get you to White Harbour, and there is still time to sail before the ports freeze over."

"Yes," Sam said. Sometimes he wished that he would get to White Harbour and find that the seas had already frozen; that he was forced to stay in the north. Sometimes, though, he dreaded that, and only wanted to get away.

He wondered if he would visit his mother at Horn Hill. 

"I might still come back," he said. "If the maesters are quick to listen… If the ports haven't frozen and the roads are still open… I might come back. In time to do something. Maybe even in time for the victory feast, after the dead are defeated." 

"You might," Jon said. "But if ravens come from the north with tales of defeat… If ravens come with news that the dead have passed the Neck… If one day the ravens stop coming…"

"Don't!" Sam said, more a sob than a word.

But Jon was firm and merciless. "If the ravens stop coming, Sam, then get out. Go to Braavos, or anywhere. Take Gilly and little Sam and get far away. Tell our story. Remember us."

"Because that's all I'm fit to do," Sam said bitterly. "Stand around and watch as others do great things." After all, he had schemed and plotted to make Jon Lord Commander, but he would never in a million years had presumed to stand himself. "See only part of the story. Run away before the end." Because Howland Reed and Bran had told Jon the truth, while Sam had dithered and shied away from the telling. And it had been Jon, not Sam, who had avenged the Old Bear's killers. Sam had just run away. Sam had just-- 

"No." Jon grabbed him by the shoulders, holding him tight. "Never believe that, Sam. Never. You saved Gilly. You saved Ser Jorah's life. You helped Bran. And even more than that, you see things clearly. You always have. Without you, I'd have been hanged as deserter just months after taking my vows. If I was the king you say I should be, I'd make you my Hand in an instant. But I am not. And I must do what I need to do…"

"And so must I." Sam scraped his hand across his eyes, scouring away snowflakes and tears. 

"Yes." Jon pulled him even closer, drawing him into a tight embrace, heedless of anyone watching. "I will miss you, Sam."

Within weeks – days, even – Jon would be heading out to face the Night's King and his armies of the dead. Would he do so as Aemon Targaryen or as Jon Snow? Would the northern lords follow him, or would they refuse? There were so many conversations still to be had. So much was unfinished.

_And I want to know_ , Sam thought, wanting it more than he had wanted anything in his life. _I want to see how it ends. I can't let this be a goodbye._

For ever afterwards – for the whole, long journey, and throughout the time that followed – he would wonder how he ever found the strength to keep his voice unbroken. "If the ravens stop coming," he said, "I will do as you say. I will leave. I will live. I will remember. I will tell."

_But it will not come to that, he swore. I won't let it. I will make the maesters listen. I will play my part in this before the end._

But what could he say? All he could say was a quiet goodbye, and then he rode away.

******

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I traditionally do long rambling end notes, so here goes...
> 
> When I started writing this, I didn't know how it was going to end, but as it went on, I came to realise that this was the only ending that seemed to fit. Sam is not an omniscient narrator. Much as I would love to see how Arya (and many others) reacted to the truth, I can only tell those things that Sam is around to see. (Even the eavesdropping felt rather like cheating.)
> 
> Outsider viewpoint is one of my favourite things in fanfic – i.e. stories in the main drivers of the plot (usually our familiar canon characters) are seen through the eyes of a minor character or an OC bystander. Obviously Sam is not a minor character or a bystander, but I felt that his viewpoint had quite a lot of common with my beloved outsider viewpoints. Unlike Jon, Dany, Arya, Sansa, and many more, Sam is not directly affected by the revelation of Jon's parentage. As Sam dithers on how to tell the news, war plans and politics are unfolding behind the closed doors of the council chamber.
> 
> It felt fitting, then, that in the end Sam wasn't the one who told Jon the truth. He (and therefore we) didn't get to see the actual telling, only Jon's reaction to it. And it felt right that Sam left before seeing the rest of the aftermath. Some readers might find it dissatisfying, but I felt it was thematically in keeping with the rest of the story.
> 
> Obviously there is lot more still to tell. Will I continue to explore the fallout of the revelation, this time though other characters' eyes? Quite possibly! Writing this one was _fun!_ Although I've written fanfic for over 20 years now, I haven't written anything for well over a year, so was very pleasantly surprised to be hit with this idea – and even more surprised when the old writing frenzy took over, and I found the words pouring out of my fingers as if by magic.
> 
> Thanks to all you've read and left kudos or commented along the way.


End file.
